{"id":4587,"date":"2008-09-10T02:58:20","date_gmt":"2008-09-10T01:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=4587"},"modified":"2008-09-10T02:58:20","modified_gmt":"2008-09-10T01:58:20","slug":"secret-killing-program-is-key-in-iraq-woodward-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/secret-killing-program-is-key-in-iraq-woodward-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret killing program is key in Iraq, Woodward says"},"content":{"rendered":"

The dramatic drop in violence in Iraq is due in large part to a secret program the U.S. military has used to kill terrorists, according to a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward.<\/p>\n

The program — which Woodward compares to the World War II era Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb — must remain secret for now or it would “get people killed,” Woodward said Monday on CNN’s Larry King Live.<\/p>\n

“It is a wonderful example of American ingenuity solving a problem in war, as we often have,” Woodward said.<\/p>\n

In “The War Within: Secret White House History 2006-2008,” Woodward disclosed the existence of secret operational capabilities developed by the military to locate, target and kill leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq and other insurgent leaders.<\/p>\n

National security adviser Stephen Hadley, in a written statement reacting to Woodward’s book, acknowledged the new strategy. Yet he disputed Woodward’s conclusion that the “surge” of 30,000 U.S. troops into Iraq<\/span><\/strong><\/a> was not the primary reason for the decline in violent attacks.<\/p>\n

“It was the surge that provided more resources and a security context to support newly developed techniques and operations,” Hadley wrote.<\/p>\n

Woodward<\/span><\/strong><\/a>, associate editor of the Washington Post, wrote that along with the surge and the new covert tactics, two other factors helped reduce the violence.<\/p>\n

One was the decision of militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to order a cease-fire by his Mehdi Army. The other was the “Anbar Awakening” movement that saw Sunni tribes aligning with U.S. troops to battle al Qaeda in Iraq.<\/p>\n

Woodward told Larry King that while there is a debate over how much credit the new secret operations should get for the drop in violence, he concluded it “accounts for a good portion.”<\/p>\n

“I would somewhat compare it to the Manhattan Project in World War II,” he said “It’s a ski slope right down in a matter of months, cutting the violence in half. This isn’t going to happen with the bunch of joint security stations or the surge.”<\/p>\n

The top secret operations, he said, will “some day in history … be described to people’s amazement.”<\/p>\n

While he would not reveal the details, Woodward said the terrorists who have been targeted were already aware of the capabilities.<\/p>\n

“The enemy has a heads up because they’ve been getting wiped out and a lot of them have been killed,” he said. “It’s not news to them.<\/p>\n

“If you were a member of al Qaeda or the resistance or some extremist militia, you would be wise to get your rear end out of town,” Woodward said. “It is very dangerous.”<\/p>\n

CNN<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The dramatic drop in violence in Iraq is due in large part to a secret program the U.S. military has used to kill terrorists, according to a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Bob Woodward. The program — which Woodward compares to the World War II era Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1616,16],"tags":[49],"class_list":{"0":"post-4587","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-usa-news","7":"category-war-terrorism","8":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4587"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4587\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}